Appreciating the need for gun respect

The distinction between control and confiscation is badly skewing the debate about reasonable firearms policy. (George Frey, Bloomberg photo)

It was ironic — some might even say richly so — that five people were injured in accidental shootings at gun shows on what was billed as the first national Gun Appreciation Day in America.

While activists were marching on state capitol buildings Saturday chanting and waving signs to reflect their determination to oppose new legislation to further restrict the sale, transfer and style of firearms, guns accidentally discharged at three shows.

At the Dixie Gun & Knife Show in Raleigh, N.C., news reports said that a man planning to sell his 12-gauge shotgun was unzipping the gun case at a security checkpoint when the firearm went off. Pellets struck a sheriff's deputy and bystander in the hand, and hit another person in the torso. The injuries were not life threatening.

At the Medina Gun Show in northeast Ohio, a dealer who had just purchased a 9mm semiautomatic handgun "accidentally pulled the trigger," according to the Akron Beacon Journal. He'd removed the magazine, but a bullet remained in the chamber. It struck the floor and then the arm and thigh of his business partner standing nearby "causing severe bleeding," the newspaper reported.

And at the Indy 1500 Gun & Knife Show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, a man leaving the premises sustained a minor injury when he shot himself in the hand while attempting to reload the .45- caliber semiautomatic that, in accordance with security rules, he had to unload before entering the show.

That's right. Even the most ardent among the "guns make us safer" and "oh, if only everyone were packing" crowd have their time-and-place limits.

What these untimely incidents tell us, however, is nothing new:

Guns are serious devices. Even in experienced hands they need to be handled with great care and respect. In the latest available reports, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed more than 14,000 accidental injuries caused by firearms in 2011 and more than 600 accidental deaths.

This argues for laws that acknowledge this awesome power — laws that mandate safety and use training for everyone who owns a firearm.

Many, maybe even the most responsible, law-abiding gun owners will tell you that they already take such training and are scrupulous about following gun-safety rules.

The problem with a mandate, some of them will tell you, is that it would require more paperwork and potentially burdensome delays in the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, and that it would stand to make it easier for the government to try to seize the guns of the citizenry should it ever fear an armed insurrection.

The same sort of problem, in other words, that many gun-rights advocates have with strengthening registration, background-check and theft-reporting requirements.

The distinction between control and confiscation is badly skewing the debate about reasonable firearms policy.

Control is the very real interest that we all have in making sure that people who own and carry guns are qualified — that they're schooled in the safe use and storage of firearms, that they don't have criminal or medical histories that make them poor candidates to entrust with guns.

Confiscation is, well, how to put this nicely? A crazy fear rooted in the viewing of too many dystopian novels and a profound misunderstanding of political reality.

Our culture is drenched in guns. No remotely serious politician is proposing to take away people's firearms. The U.S. Supreme Court has been clearly in support of a broad reading of the Second Amendment, meaning it would require a coup d'etat for any U.S. political leader to seriously infringe on the general right to keep and bear arms.

If we can't set aside that crazy fear, we'll never be able to strike the compromise that's otherwise within reach.

Such a compromise would make it very difficult for guns to get into the hands of the unqualified and irresponsible, but still relatively easy to get into the hands of the qualified and responsible.